Saturday, January 31, 2026

my movie montages


I love the movies. And I like making things. So I spend a lot of time making movies out of the movies. Here are links to some of my ongoing montage projects.  (Note: They're always best with headphones, or good speakers. The bigger the screen the better. Probably best at the theatre, or a gallery...)

Installation: 
Dal Schindell Gallery 
Sep 16 - Oct 3, 2026
Gallery closed Sundays
Several of my long form film montages will be featured this fall in the gallery at Regent College on the UBC Campus. The centrepiece will be the premiere of the 12-hour Date Movie, which moves through the twelve months of the calendar year using date-specific clips from thousands of films. Timepiece, which premiered in 2025 at the Richmond Cultural Centre, moves through twenty-four hours of clock time in one hour, a tribute to Christian Marclay's video masterwork The Clock. Also premiering will be the Cinema Prayer Chapel, a contemplative space featuring prayers of every kind drawn from world film, as well as other works celebrating the movies and movie-going.
gallery website

Date Movies
The whole obsession began with the project of finding date references in movies.  On June 6, 2004, I marked the 60th anniversary of D-Day by watching The Longest Day, which led to a search to find one movie for each day in the calendar year, undertaken by several participants in the Arts & Faith online conversation board. Which eventually led to the idea of creating mashups of multiple film clips representing specific days of the year, usually the birthdays of friends. I've created almost 100 such videos,  but many were posted on a defunct Vimeo account. Here are links to a handful I've put up on YouTube.
Jan 6  
Jun 7  
Sep 2  
Oct 2  
Dec 22  
 
Another iteration of this whole dates-in-movies project was to build a thirty minute montage with one clip for each calendar day. I really like it. 
or one month at a time... (September is my favourite)
A Month At The Movies In Two And A Half Minutes 
October | dates only | dates + titles 
November | dates only | dates + titles   
I prefer the versions with no titles, just a stream of images and sound. But if you're curious about what movies the clips are from, or about the events depicted, there are versions including those things as well 

Dial V for Video
A tribute to video stores, a trailer for International Independent Video Store Day. 40 movies in 4:32.  Here.  

Good Time Diner
My son-in-law plays in a band, and they thought it would be a blast to project movie clips behind them while they play, and during breaks. So I got to make some really long montages! Welcome to the diner! Here's a minute-and-a-half trailer for one of their gigs, but unfortunately there are restrictions for viewing the longer montages. 

NT GUILTY: You need a good lawyer?
Movie clips about lawyers and the law, a graduation present for my daughter Katie's graduation from law school. Probably my favourite. Montage, not daughter.  Here

The Movies Go To The Movies: Marquees
A chronology of movie-going, as seen in the movies. A work in progress; here's an early version, starting with a 1915 screening of "The Curse Of Drink" at The Gem (from the film "On Moonlight Bay") through to "The Bicycle Thief" at The Rialto in 1991 (as seen in "The Player"). 

Earth Day International Film Festival: End of the World Edition
And here's the trailer for an imaginary film festival. Just for fun, to pass the time during the pandemic.

photos | mark menjivar | refrigerators

 
midwife / middle school science teacher

bartender

short order cook

street advertiser

Tuesday, January 27, 2026

dorothy parker on ernest hemingway


I have heard of him, both at various times and all in one great bunch, that he is so hard-boiled he makes a daily practice of busting his widowed mother in the nose; that he dictates his stories because he can’t write, and has them read to him because he can’t read; that he is expatriate to such a degree that he tears down any American flag he sees flying in France; that no woman within half-a-mile of him is a safe woman; that he not only commands enormous prices for his short stories, but insists, additionally, on taking the right eye out of the editor’s face; that he has been a tramp, a safe-cracker, and a stockyard attendant; that he is the Pet of the Left Bank, and may be found at any hour of the day or night sitting at a little table at the Select, rubbing absinthe into his gums; that he really hates all forms of sport, and only skis, hunts, fishes, and fights bulls in order to be cute; that a wound he sustained in the Great War was of a whimsical, inconvenient, and inevitably laughable description; and that he also writes under the name of Morley Callaghan. About all that remains to be said is that he is the Lost Dauphin, that he was shot as a German spy, and that he is actually a woman, masquerading in man’s clothes. And those rumors are doubtless being started, even as we sit here.

He is in his early thirties, he weighs about two hundred pounds, and he is even better than those photographs. The effect upon women is such that they want to go right out and get him and bring him home, stuffed. Heaven help him, if he ever settles in New York and is displayed to the sabre-toothed ladies of stage, pen, salon, and suburb who throng the local Bohemian gatherings. He is susceptible to flattery, and then is stuck with the flatterer. He is afflicted with deep-seated illness in the presence of unhappily married women who are interested in the Arts.

The New Yorker
November 23, 1929

photo | lothhar wolleh | rene and georgette magritte with their dog after the war


Lothar Wolleh, 1967

Paul Simon, 1983

Sunday, January 04, 2026

photo | lincoln clarkes | happy canoe year

 

pender lake, vancouver 1997

rollieflex camera

"Simon borrowed his father’s canoe and we cut a hole in the fence. 
After an hour security guards threatened to call the police if we didn’t immediately leave."